Last week
I discussed my initial thoughts on Phantasy Star IV, a JRPG for the
Sega Genesis. As you could probably tell, I liked it quite a bit and
was impressed by what it accomplished technically.
That’s great, but what was it that made the game truly stand out.
First, we
need to start with the story. It starts out as fairly simple RPG
fare. You play as Chaz, a young hunter’s guild member on the planet of
Motavia. Once a lush, green world, Motavia has become
a mostly barren desert planet full of monsters. That’s bad news for
most civilians, but it also means plenty of work for Chaz and his mentor
Alys, a hunter so respected that she has been assigned a critical
mission offered by the Motavian University. That
mission sets the pair on a path that will reveal the origin of the
monsters, the reason for Motavia’s decline and the true level of danger
the galaxy will soon face.
I think
the best part of the story is how well it raises the stakes. Early in
the game, you are introduced to the villain Zio, a cult leader and
powerful magician who is hell bent on controlling Motavia
and all of its people. He’s a great villain, incredibly evil and
unbelievably strong. You just know your party is going to spend the
next 30 or so hours honing your skills, building up to an epic showdown
with an intense final battle...until you best Zio
a third of the way through the game. He had been put over as an all
powerful being the entire game so far, only for you to find out he
serves an even more powerful master.
It’s
things like that that give RPGs a sense of scope, you know Zio was an
absolute monster and it took all you had to defeat him. Now there’s
something or someone even more dangerous? It really raises
the stakes. While you will certainly deal with typical RPG
distractions, rescuing people from a cave, stopping earthquakes, etc.
the narrative never loses focus. Every thing you do is working towards
saving the world, even if it isn’t always what you are
focused on 100 percent. It makes you feel like you are constantly
moving forward, even if your party is sidetracked. There are a few
points where the story lags and the underlying plot isn’t anything
revolutionary, even if some of the events that happen
in the process are. Still, its far more good than bad.
To me
though, the world building is what takes PSIV from good to great.
Everything about the worlds of the Algol Solar System feels real, from
the way each society functions to the what their towns look
like to how their citizens deal with struggling to get by. The
Motavian University looks like and feels like a college, the dean and
administrators are located in a grandiose, immaculate building while the
students live in dorms with posters on the walls
and junk strewn about. The natives of the ice planet Dezolis, which
you visit later in the game, worship fire and live alongside displaced
Parmians (Parma was apparently a planet that was destroyed in one of the
earlier games), who struggle just to fight
the bitter cold. When you talk to one of the university students, he
talks about the concerned letters his parents send him constantly. When
you finally reach the town he is from, one of the houses has a couple
who talk about their concern for there son
who is away at the university. These are NPCs, not meaningful
characters, but stuff like this makes the world feel like its populated
by people rather than robots. Sega included a bunch of stuff like this
and while it may seem insignificant, it makes the
world feel real and it makes every character matter.
I also
have to give them some credit for the dialogue. It’s extremely well
done and has tons of personality. Again, it makes the characters feel
real and makes them easier to relate to. The NPC dialogue
in this game may be the best ever, its up there with Super Mario RPG
and Earthbound for me. I rarely felt like I was wasting my time talking
to everyone in a town. That was not common in RPGs of this era. This
is all bolstered by the better than average
translation. PS IV certainly has its share of Engrish, but its fare
better than its contemporaries. This allows the story to come through
much more cleanly and makes all the emotional moments far more
impactful. I will say, I feel like it got worse as it
went on but its still head and shoulders over most RPGs, even big
budget ones, of the time.
Great as
the NPC interactions are, they would be meaningless without strong main
characters to build around. Chaz is an excellent protagonist, he is
young and naive, but likeable. One of the main problems
RPGs run into with characters like this is that they overdo it, making
the protagonist a complete ingrate with no people skills. In addition
to making for an unlikeable character, it also makes the character feel
less real. Alys is great as the strong willed
mentor and elite soldier, and it should also be noted that few women in
video games were presented that way at the time.
Some of
the characters are more trope-y, like the arrogant yet enigmatic
magician Rune, the physically weak but brilliant academic Hahn or the
“I’m doing it all for my family!” Birdman Gryz, but they
are so well done and their dialogue is so well written they still feel
fresh. Rika, a mysterious alien, Raja, a wisecracking Dezolian priest,
Kyra, a headstrong young girl and Wren and Demi, two highly advanced
androids, round out the cast. Each is important
to the plot in their own way and the game goes a long way in making you
care about each of them as people. It’s a great cast gameplay wise, as
all of them are useful in their own way during combat.
I also
like the pacing of the game, its different than any RPG I have ever
played and I kind of like that. Most RPGs, especially older ones, fall
into a pattern, story segment, town, dungeon, boss, repeat.
PS IV mixes it up for better or worse. Sometimes you will visit
multiple new towns before having to enter a dungeon, or fight multiple
bosses in quick succession. The dungeon length is pretty varied, some
are long, some are only a few rooms. I kind of like
it, it mixes everything up and keeps you from getting lulled into a
pattern. There are also plenty of optional dungeons and side quests,
which, again, wasn’t a given at the time. I generally like all the
dungeons, although the final one was incredibly short
and massively disappointing.
PS IV
isn’t perfect. The translation is great overall, but it does feel like
it starts to get worse towards the end. There are a lot of plot points
or character relationships that could have been expanded
on more and I think some of the dungeons could have been longer. The
encounter rate seems to be incredibly random, you will have three
battles in three steps, then clear an entire dungeon floor before you
hit a fourth. This isn’t gamebreaking for me, but
people who complain about random encounters in old school RPGs will
hate it.
Frankly,
its remaining flaws come from that old school RPG style. For one, you
don’t really ever get to choose your party members, they are set for you
by story events. This was common in early 90s
RPGs, but most series’ had moved away from that model by this time.
Probably the most frustrating flaw is the inventory system, you don’t
get a clear description of what any of the items actually do. It’s
worse when you are buying weapons, as you can’t see
their statistics until after you buy them. That is incredibly
frustrating, especially considering items and equipment in this game are
very expensive.
But none
of that changes the fact that this is a great game. Not good, great.
When I started doing this blog a year ago, this was the kind of stuff I
was looking for. I recommend every RPG fan, especially
those who never owned a Genesis, to go play this series. Even moderate
RPG fans will enjoy PS IV, although that group should probably avoid
the older games I have been told they are a little too old school for
most. That said, I know I will certainly go
back and play them. PS IV may miss out on the tip-top tier of RPGs,
but its still a classic, possibly in my top 50 and definitely in my top
75 games of all time.
9.5/10
Play this if:
You are looking for a great RPG and have already played most of the greats
You were a "Nintendo kid" and missed out
You were a fan of the early Final Fantasy gameplay, but preferred the aesthetic of the newer ones.
Avoid if:
You don't like RPGs
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